Today's Experiment, Archtop Style

GAD

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Guild-1988-Artist-Award-PickupApart.jpg
 

Walter Broes

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You're rescueing that guitar from the humbucker and installing the floating DeArmond single coil it deserves?!? :)
 

SFIV1967

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Interesting construction of that (1988) Artist Award Guild humbucker. Thanks for sharing! Never saw one opened yet.
So the two mounting rods were soldered to the inside of the cover or were they just glued with epoxy? Also was the cover simply glued onto the bobbin and you ripped the gold plating away with it? Does not look like solder.
Obviously moisture collected under the cover so the pole pieces started to rust.
Ralf
 

GAD

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You're rescueing that guitar from the humbucker and installing the floating DeArmond single coil it deserves?!? :)

I will not drill into the neck to make that happen. I am exploring other options, though.
 

GAD

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Interesting construction of that (1988) Artist Award Guild humbucker. Thanks for sharing! Never saw one opened yet.
So the two mounting rods were soldered to the inside of the cover or were they just glued with epoxy? Also was the cover simply glued onto the bobbin and you ripped the gold plating away with it? Does not look like solder.
Obviously moisture collected under the cover so the pole pieces started to rust.
Ralf

From what I can tell the coils were epoxied into the cover. The only solder I see is the ground to one of the rods. The rods appear to have just been glued into the cover along with the coils.
 

GAD

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Does the rust on the pole pieces affect tone and/or sound levels?

Probably not. I think rusty chops affect tone more than rusty pole pieces ever could. :laughing:
 
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txbumper57

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I will not drill into the neck to make that happen. I am exploring other options, though.

You could probably engineer and fabricate a mount for the Dearmond single coil using the existing block on the pickguard for the original Humbucker. Then it would be extremely clean looking without the traditional side of the neck mounting point of the Dearmond style single coil. I'll bet that would look sexy as hell and of course sound Awesome!

TX
 

GAD

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You could probably engineer and fabricate a mount for the Dearmond single coil using the existing block on the pickguard for the original Humbucker. Then it would be extremely clean looking without the traditional side of the neck mounting point of the Dearmond style single coil. I'll bet that would look sexy as hell and of course sound Awesome!

TX

I thought about something like that, but I have to be honest (flame-suit on) and say that I think the DeArmond pickups for archtops are ugly as hell. I actually really like the look of the stock pickup. In both cases sound trumps looks, but I just can't drill into such a nice guitar for what I consider to be an awful looking pickup. Also, the DeArmond is clearly designed to be mounted the way it wants to be mounted, so I'd think any other solution would be a kludge.
 

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If you don't like the looks of the DeArmond Rhythm Chief, there are other pickups designed for archtops that you could mount on the pickguard–Kent Armstrong has both humbuckers and single coils exactly for this purpose, with a very good reputation (used by many boutique builders), and there are also Benedetto-designed humbuckers (now manufactured by Seymour Duncan). Another option is Pete Biltoft (Vintage Vibe), who's floating Charlie Christian-style pickups have a lot of fans.
 

GAD

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If you don't like the looks of the DeArmond Rhythm Chief, there are other pickups designed for archtops that you could mount on the pickguard–Kent Armstrong has both humbuckers and single coils exactly for this purpose, with a very good reputation (used by many boutique builders), and there are also Benedetto-designed humbuckers (now manufactured by Seymour Duncan). Another option is Pete Biltoft (Vintage Vibe), who's floating Charlie Christian-style pickups have a lot of fans.

Yup. Those are among the "other options" I wrote about earlier.
 
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